


Flowers Make the Best Gifts

by SilentWaves



Series: Waves' Dr. STONE Week 2020 [2]
Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Day 2 - Flowers, Dr STONE Week 2020, Gen, I really hope that's not an incest tag, Kohaku Wants to Help, No Incest, Pneumonia, Sister-Sister Relationship, they're family and they care a lot about each other there's no romance here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentWaves/pseuds/SilentWaves
Summary: Kohaku just wants Ruri to be happy. And she gets why everyone brings flowers for her, she does, but it really shouldn’t be that difficult to get gifts that don’t contain any pollen.
Relationships: Kohaku & Ruri (Dr. STONE)
Series: Waves' Dr. STONE Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806610
Kudos: 15
Collections: Dr. Stone Week 2020





	Flowers Make the Best Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Dr. STONE is about a 10/10 right now, but if we got more sibling bonding scenes it would easily reach a 12.

Kohaku was very young when she realized that she wanted to become a village guard. 

She didn’t know how to count the seasons back then, but thinking back, it must have been the summer after her seventh winter when she realized that people were just a bit too comfortable around her older sister.

The other village children, for one, wouldn’t stop fawning over her. Kohaku wasn’t jealous in the slightest, because she more than anyone knows how much Ruri deserves the flowers that everyone sends her everyday. 

But.

Nobody knew what kind of breathing problems Ruri had, and even with the few years of experience that Kohaku has with nature, she knows that flowers tend to make certain people sneeze.

She definitely thinks that the kind and wonderful and amazing and big-hearted (and so on) Ruri deserves the whole world. But Kohaku also knows that she doesn’t want her sister to die.

So Kohaku abandoned her priestess lessons — she wouldn’t learn a single tale. If Ruri dies here, then so will the generations of the stories that were passed down with her. Was it petty? Yes. But at the same time, Kohaku wasn’t going to allow her sister to every think that it was alright for her to die. If anything, Ruri will stay alive now, just because she _has_ to. _She was always better at living for others instead of herself,_ Kohaku recalls bitterly.

Kohaku started scouting the forest. She learned how to climb a tree, how to swing from vines, how to wield a dagger. 

By her ninth fall, she was able to provide more food to the village than ever, not that it ever seemed to be enough. There were less people dying of hunger now, but that doesn’t mean Kohaku could stop those with numb fingers and frozen lips from passing away. 

There was only so much cloth and hide to go around, after all. The furs, which kept the animals so warm and so alive, couldn’t be worn by humans with the same effectiveness — if there was a way, nobody had yet figured it out.

But Kohaku couldn’t dwell on that. She provided as much food as she could, but she was only nine winters old and she could not do much more than help her ailing older sister get through the season.

“Just one more season, Ruri,” She would mutter to her at night. “Just get through one more season, _please_.”

That particular winter, the air was much too cold for any more talking, and Ruri was looking even more down than usual without the colourful flowers that brightened her room, the long-dead petals taking their place.

That was the winter that Kohaku decided she would do better. She would always feel better after drinking warm water. Well, Kohaku could do more that that. She would bring a bath for Ruri, a warm-enough one that wouldn’t be possible even with the largest fires. There were tales of boiling-hot water, the kind that would take forever to heat up even with a whole tree to burn for it. She would find some, and bring them back for her sister to warm up in.

Kohaku resolved to do exactly that as soon as the snow melted. During midday, the only time of day warm enough to move and eat, Kohaku would spend some time finding a bath bucket small enough to carry, but large enough to support Ruri’s weight. She didn’t end up finding any that fit the description, but she can just get strong enough to carry multiple loads, so she instead looks for ones that don’t have any leaks. 

She realized that she needed to do weight training too, so that’s exactly what she did. It was a horrible winter, as every one was, so it wasn’t easy in the slightest. It was especially bad for Ruri though, and Kohaku could never find it in her heart to complain about her own struggles when she sees her older sister gasping for air when it was so thin from the chill.

And there were no more flowers being sent to her house.

Kohaku thought about it more, during a night when it was too cold to fall asleep. It was true, that some people had a harder time breathing when they were around flowers, and whenever spring came around. Ruri might not be one of those people, because she seems like that _all the time_. 

Kohaku shakes her head, flinging a few stray frost bits off her hair in the process. _No, I’m not going to risk it,_ she thought.

So when spring finally came, Kohaku knows that while she’s gotten stronger, one of the other guards-in-training could defeat her in a heartbeat. She started carrying logs and heavy animal corpses back from her excursions into the forest, just as she kept venturing further in hopes of spotting the mysterious boiling water.

Every day, she had the persisting thoughts of _what if it’s just an old story? What if, unlike everything else, this was the one thing that was just made up? Or maybe we misinterpreted it?_ but she kept venturing nevertheless.

And as a small comfort, she would find beautiful flowers out on the riverbank that were too far out for anyone else to reach, and she doesn’t bring them back because the flowers that she brings home were not going to be the ones that kill her sister. 

But as spring bring Kohaku the warmth she needs to take care of Ruri, it also brings the other villagers an opportunity to hurt her. 

They would never do it intentionally, obviously. Ruri’s cough had always been bad, so they could never tell if it the flowers ever made it worse. Hell, Kohaku herself didn’t even know, so she could never tell them to back off when there wasn’t even proof that it was doing any harm.

But it could be. But it wasn’t. But it _could be._

Kohaku runs away to the forest when she gets confused. She’s learned the paths in the trees now, familiar with every mossy rock and every empty cave. The forest was easy to deal with. Her sister’s illness was not.

The flowers made Ruri happy. They made her smile all the bit wider and her laughs just a bit lighter. Kohaku could never take that away. But she would never hear her sister laugh again if she died from the very thing that brought her so much joy.

When Kohaku was a few hundred trees from the village, after her ninth winter, two season cycles since she started searching, she finally, _finally_ found the water that she’s been searching for.

Carefully filling the bath bucket with as much water as Kohaku dared to carry, she slowly made her way back home. Especially after that cold winter with such horribly coarse air, Kohaku hopes that the hot water that she’s picked up would help. 

She doesn’t quite have a solution for the flowers yet, but Kohaku knows the coughing and sneezing effect has something to do with the powder on them. And the powder, she knows, will come off with water.

Kohaku memorizes the spot with the mysterious water. She would come out here everyday, three to five times depending on travel conditions, and she would supply her sister with whatever she can do to help.

* * *

It doesn’t help.

Well, it helps a bit. But a ‘bit’ isn’t enough to stop the illness entirely. While Ruri manages to breathe a little deeper when she’s submerged in the water, it cools to room temperature within the time it takes Kohaku to eat her meal. She’s gotten faster overtime, almost 11 years old now. Kohaku learned to count the cycles instead of the winters, but she still has to make the subconscious conversion.

“Ruri, what if I take you to the spring with me?” Kohaku asked one day. “It won’t cool down, and you can sleep near the heat during winter. It might make it easier for your cough.” 

Ruri smiles, a little bitter and her eyes glaze over just a bit, “I would love to, Kohaku, but if I get a warm spot for the winters, then the whole village would have to get the same treatment, wouldn’t you say? This lovely bath water that you’ve gathered is already plenty.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, Kohaku, but that’s all there is to it. You should reconsider learning the 100 tales, and then there’ll be no need for me to use up so much of your time and energy in the first place.” Ruri looks down, holding a slightly-wilted lily that their friends had delivered earlier. “I know you mean well, but it would be better for everyone if you just took up my title. You’re healthy, and you’re strong—”

“Yeah, so?” Kohaku interrupts. “I don’t care about any of that! You still deserve to live, look at all these gifts that people send you because they want you to recover!”

“And I love them very much, but—”

“But nothing!” Kohaku was shouting now, she knows. Their father would probably chase Kohaku out of their hut soon to ensure that she doesn’t give Ruri too much stress, but she needed to make her point clear. “I’m going to find a way to help you, and you’re going to accept it. I’d rather _die_ than become a priestess!” She says, and just as she hears their father’s footsteps approach the room, she gets up and flees.

Her eyes are watery as she runs, but she wipes away the tears and finds a peaceful spot by the river to think.

_What more could she do?_ She thought. She didn’t know what was wrong with Ruri, just like how one of the new babies was inexplicably born with the blurry-eye disease. But blurry-eye disease didn’t run risk of killing them, now did it? There was no way for Kohaku to solve the problem, but she could help with Ruri’s symptoms as much as she can. The spring seems to refill itself with the constant rainfall, and any water poured into it seems to heat up nicely. Kohaku has recently started cooking small prey using the steam that rises up from the pool. It took hours, but it tasted so much better without the char that would come with every roasting.

She lets out a bitter laugh. There’s no use caring about the taste of her food when Ruri might not even live to experience the next day. Kohaku can’t bring back this food anyways, because it’s long-cooled by then no matter what she does.

She’s fiddling with the hide of a rabbit that she just skinned when she gets an idea.

She fiddles with the hide for a bit. The fur was matted with dried blood, and the colour had long-stained what used to be a beautiful earthly brown, but it worked in her favour.

They couldn’t eat the ears, and rabbit hide was too small to be made into clothing. What if…

_No, that’s disgusting_. Kohaku tosses the fur into the river. The concept itself wasn’t too bad, but she couldn’t use the corpse of an animal as a gift for her ailing sister. It might attract flies.

As she walked around the river, searching for deer or bears, she brainstorms. 

She could make it out of straw. That’s small enough to manipulate into whatever she needed, but her hands were nowhere near nimble enough for that. She’d need old man Kaseki to help, and if she did ask, then it wouldn’t really be _her_ present, would it?

She had just downed a bear when she realized that there was always scrap cloth laying around, too small to be repurposed into clothing. 

And so that would be exactly what she used to make her folded flowers without pollen but still pretty enough to cheer her sister up.

* * *

Kohaku forgot to consider the fact that she was absolutely horrible at anything hands-on.

_Aw, come on. It’s just like any kind of knife-work, just twist it, and hold it like so, and… fuck._ Kohaku sighs, looking at the crumple in her hands that looked nothing like the flowers that filled their house. She figured that cloth probably wouldn’t hold its shape on its own, so she asked Kaseki to gift her some more lacquer. 

It just ends up with her sitting in a pile of messy cloth with sticky hands and nowhere closer to her goal. Again.

She sighs again, and really, she should just swallow her pride and ask Kaseki, but she was only 12 years old, and sure, she’s been working on this mini-project for a year now, but she thinks she’s making a decent amount of progress already. The crumple, while looking nothing like flowers, started to resemble _something_ , at the very least.

She looks at the misshapen pieces of folded cloth in her hand, and think about how much longer it’ll take before she’s mastered this. Hell, she doesn’t even need that much, she just wants them to cheer her sister up without making her feel worse. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

But if Kohaku wants to learn something, it’s probably better to ask the masters of the craft. So she turns village-ward and tracks down Kaseki.

_He really does know his stuff,_ Kohaku thinks, _I guess he really did earn his title as the village craftsman, huh?_

He teaches her to separate the layers, and use each piece as a part of a whole rather than forcing their shapes into something unfamiliar. He mentioned that the scrap cloth pieces already resemble the shape of petals, and should be treated as such. He had Kohaku gather flowers to study from, and he got her to bring in thin but sturdy plant stalks to attach to the bottom. 

They would spend any free afternoons like this, just sitting in the peace of the village, messing with their flowers in mutual comfortable silence. In only five days, Kohaku had a full bouquet’s worth of assorted flowers to present to Ruri.

“Hmm, but they’re missing a bit of colour, wouldn’t you say?” Kaseki leans over to observe their work. “How about you gather some berries for paint?”

“Ah, sorry Kaseki. Berry paint would attract flies.” Kohaku looks at the flowers. Sure, they were pretty drab, but they were still pretty. 

“And you say you don’t want any real flowers to be a part of this?” He asks.

“No, just the pollen.” Kohaku responds.

“Well then, why don’t you find some nice petals use for colour? We just need to run water through crushed petals, and the colour lightly stains the cloth. That way, Ruri can have all the colours without any of the harmful parts of the flowers.”

Kohaku brightens. “That sounds great! I’ll go get those right now!”

Kaseki was about to stop her, as the sun was already starting to set, but there was no stopping Kohaku when she’s made up her mind. 

“All right then,” Kaseki says, cracking his back as he sits back down by his workbench. “I suppose I should gather some more cloth scraps for her.”

* * *

The rest of the village had quickly found out about their little project to light up Ruri’s room without the use of any real flowers, and Kaseki’s workstation started to fill up very quickly. Many villagers wanted to find a way to cheer up Ruri without causing any more suffering, and as she wasn’t allowed to leave her hut, she was never made aware of any of the proceedings.

Chrome likes to come by bringing shiny bits of metal, and while most people refused to put strange rocks into their delicate flowers at first, they eventually succumbed to the bits of shiny ores. While this was happening, Kohaku and some of the other children started looking for flowers in the forest, choosing the brightest-coloured petals to bring home. 

After a month of these proceedings, they presented their first batch of the flowers to Ruri, who had just had to put away the wilted ones from before. 

At the sight of it all, her cheeks reddened and her eyes watered. 

“I really didn’t think the flowers you all were bringing me were a problem for my health. Really,” Ruri insisted, though she held on tightly to the bouquets that she had just received. She would never let them go, and they would never die, so she would never have to.

“Well, you have to accept them anyways,” Kohaku smiled gently. “You’re not getting any other kind of flower from now on.”

Soon, as a pastime for any villagers looking to do something fun whenever they didn’t have to hunt or work on new clothes for the growing children, they would make some cloth flowers. The lovely gifts that’s filling up every corner of their house means that Ruri’s smile has never been so bright, and Kohaku’s heart, never felt so full.

She didn’t know if her sister would be alright. But she had to, she knows, because Ruri was just that kind of person to never leave a gift unreturned. Kohaku knows that Ruri would feel obligated now to survive, not out of necessity for her title as the priestess, but because she was _Ruri_ , and they would like her to stay with them. No, they _needed_ her to stay with them, and not just for the stories that she learned.

And really, Kohaku has never seen so much colour in the house before. Even during her coughing fits, Kohaku could see something in Ruri’s eyes that was never there before. _A burning desire to survive._

And that will was all that Kohaku would ask from her.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun writing this, especially since we are severely lacking in the familial sibling relationships tags! I wanna see Kohaku and Ruri get along more in canon please!!!
> 
> Also, based on what I've seen from the teasers for others' DRST Week prompts, I know at least one other person had written a similar concept, but I had this in the drafted long before I found out, so uh.. yeah. Two cakes and no accusations.
> 
> Anyways, feel free to talk to me on [Tumblr](https://voicelesswaves.tumblr.com/) or leave a comment!


End file.
